What’s on TV Thursday: ‘Edge of Democracy’ and ‘Riviera’

What’s Streaming

THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY (2019) Stream on Netflix. In this documentary, the filmmaker Petra Costa grapples with and chronicles the triumph of left-wing politics — and then authoritarian politics — in Brazil. From the attitude of the current, she covers the presidencies and eventual falls of the left-leaning Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff and the rise of Brazil’s present president, the outspoken populist Jair Bolsonaro. “Though she is a scrupulous and dogged digger-up of hidden facts and a thoughtful interpreter of public events, Costa hasn’t produced a work of objective journalism or detached historical scholarship so much as a personal reckoning with her nation’s past and present,” A.O. Scott wrote in his evaluate for The New York Times. “The facts and arguments she communicates should be studied by anyone interested in the fate of democracy,” he famous, “in Brazil or anywhere else.”

STRANGE ANGELStream on CBS All Access. Rockets, World War II-era America and a sex magic cult: these are the ingredients that fuel “Strange Angel,” a series based on the life of Jack Parsons, a Southern California rocket engineer who was behind technological breakthroughs in the years surrounding World War II — and also had an interest in the occult. The second season kicked off last week.